Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to reservoir simulation, and more particularly to machines for reservoir simulation with well completions and reservoir data quality assurance.
Description of the Related Art
During the production life cycle of oil and gas extracted from reservoir fields in geological formations, certain stages are followed which include exploration, appraisal, reservoir development, production decline, and abandonment of the reservoir. During this lifecycle, massive amounts of data are collected, such as seismic, well logs, core data, and production data which represent raw data. In addition, during the life of field development, several disciplines develop studies and understandings directed to different part of the reservoir. For example, geologists and geo-physicists develop structure, geological horizons, and geological models for the reservoir. Petro-physicists develop initial saturation and oil-in-place maps. Reservoir engineers provide field development plans. The raw and interpreted data are integrated in a cumbersome process in order to construct reservoir simulation models.
Analytic tools do not yield meaningful results for complicated reservoirs or reservoir fluids. The influence of rock properties of the reservoir and fluid properties on hydrocarbon recovery can be captured by using reservoir simulation. Reservoir simulation is a comprehensive framework to optimize the production of oil and gas fields. Many key questions about the optimum development scheme for a particular reservoir can be answered by performing simulations after carefully characterizing the reservoir.
In order to yield meaningful results, reservoir simulation engineers have to go through an intense and time consuming process to manually quality check large amounts of data which can consist of wells, logs, and completion events for as many as 50 or more years of history.
Recognized by the inventors is that it is fundamental that data used in building reservoir simulation models be quality controlled and cross-checked to eliminate inconsistencies and problems during the history match process. Also, recognized is the need for a simulation data quality workflow design and software package that guides engineers through the quality checking process as the first stage of simulation model construction.